Pacific Rim is a film in which giant robots punch the shit out of slightly giant-er monsters, it’s not supposed to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t put a crap-ton of effort into making it. For example, almost every Jaeger and Kaiju you see on screen is based on something from our world. Gipsy Danger for example is based on a cross between John Wayne and the Chrysler Building.

If you think we’re kidding, we’re totally not. According to an interview with Guillermo del Toro himself, he spent ages working with concept artists to give each Jaeger a unique look representative of where in the world they came from. In regards to Gipsy Danger, the American Jaeger, he opted to give it a totally boss, John Wayne-esque, gun-slinger strut.

In the same interview del Toro also revealed that the look of Gipsy Danger was modelled after the New York City skyline and a tanker ship. Russian Jaeger, Cherno Alpha on the other hand.

This thing.

Is based on a nuclear containment silo, a T-34 tank and a robot from the Modile Suit Gundam series, a cocktail so crazy-awesome we wouldn’t be surprised if it was written across the script in crayon. In fact, virtually everything you see in the film is based on something cool/dangerous.

The Chinese Jaeger, Crimson Typhoon is based on Hal 9000 and Floyd Mayweather Jr, Striker Eureka is based in part on NFL player, Lester Hayes and it moves like a dirty boxer with a barrage of missile in his chest. As far the Kaiju themselves, Knifehead is based on a goblin shark and your nightmares, Leatherback is based on an ape, Otachi is based on a Chinese dragon and the final boss of the film, Slattern is based on a hammer head shark some crammed into a blender along with every baddie from the Power Rangers series.

No shit.

We highly recommend watching the film again just to see how many similarities between the Kaiju, Jeagers and stuff from the boring, robot-less real world we live in you can spot, you know, before that scene where Gipsy Danger rocket elbows a Kaiju in the face, because you’ll be too hype when that happens.

Karl Smallwood loves facts and has spent the last two years listing them online.
However, he dislikes that virtually every fact dispensed by another website was on Reddit two days earlier. So he decided to head up FactFiend, to show that there's plenty of awesome stuff out there if you're willing to look for it.